“You did not have an invitation.”
“No.”
“Weren’t you nervous?”
Maya glanced around the mansion.
“A little.”
“Then why ask to join?”
She looked at Ethan before answering.
“Because he was sitting in the middle of a party, but nobody was talking to him.”
William followed her gaze.
Before Maya arrived, the adults had performed around Ethan.
They had adjusted decorations, served food, played music, and offered rehearsed encouragement.
They had worked very hard to prevent him from noticing that he was alone.
None of them had asked what he wanted.
Maya had seen it from outside the gate.
Ethan placed the finished drawing in William’s hands.
Captain Thunder filled the page in blue and silver.
His wheelchair shot lightning into the sky.
Beside him stood a smaller hero in a yellow cape holding a pencil like a sword.
“That is Maya,” Ethan explained.
“What is her power?” William asked.
“She makes people tell the truth.”
Maya shook her head.
“That was supposed to be your power.”
“I changed mine.”
“To what?”
Ethan looked at the empty chairs.
“I can tell who my real friends are.”
William’s throat tightened.
He did not apologize immediately.
An apology delivered too quickly would have been another attempt to control the moment.
He waited until Maya was helping the magician search for the vanished coin and Ethan was beside him beneath the canopy.
“I was wrong about today,” William said.
Ethan looked down at his hands.
“I wanted it to be perfect,” William continued.
“I thought if everything looked like before, maybe you would feel like before.”
“I don’t feel like before.”
“I know.”
“Do you hate my chair?”
The question struck William with more force than anger could have.
He remembered every time he had looked away while a caregiver folded the chair into the car.
Every time he had spoken about Ethan’s recovery as though the present version of his son were only temporary.
Every expensive specialist he had hired without asking Ethan what he feared.
“I hated what happened to you,” William said carefully.
“But I think I let you believe I hated the chair.
I am sorry.”
Ethan rubbed one thumb along the wheel rim.
“It gets me places.”
“Yes.”
“And it is faster than your shoes.”
William smiled.
“Also true.”
“One wheel or two?” Ethan asked.
“For what?”
“For your apology.”
William looked at Captain Thunder’s glowing wheels.
“Neither,” he said.
